In the early hours of January 1st.
The New Year's Eve bell rings, and all the timers turn over to the next year.
In the old house at No. 284 Zhuanzhu Lane, Lin Zhaoxi was sitting in front of the window of the small room. The current small room is completely different from the non-mainstream style she came to the "heavy cheese world". The periodic table of elements and the world map are pasted on the wall, and the reference books are neatly stacked. Although the indoor temperature is very low, there is a strong learning atmosphere.
The little mouse alarm clock on the table was ticking off, but Lin Zhaoxi didn't read the book, but stared at the dial of the alarm clock.
She felt so confused that she even doubted the existence of reality, and at the same time became more lucid than ever.
All the details after the Internet cafe fire kept going back in her mind.
After Lao Lin understood the ins and outs, he didn't blame her for being nosy, but rather blamed her for not explaining the matter clearly. If the boss could be more careful, the Internet cafe might not be able to burn down.
She stood in the night wind, listening to Lao Lin's rambling, her heart was as cold as a leak of wind because of her despair.
At that time, there were police officers in the Internet cafe doing surveys. The police heard their conversation, and she was taken back to the police station to make a statement.
Same story as before.
Several elementary school students who set the fire were caught immediately. Their parents were very unreasonable, and they quarreled with the police at the police station, and there was a lot of noise around them.
Lin Zhaoxi was taken to identify the suspect.
She looked into the room through the one-way glass. Under the incandescent lamp, the faces of the children were compared with the previous moment.
One child has a lot of flesh on his face, another has a mole near his nose, and another has a small scar under the corner of his eye.
They bowed their heads and said nothing.
The incident, the location, and the people have not changed, only the time of occurrence and the severity of the incident have changed.
It was hard for her to describe how she felt after that.
She has been in the "Heavy Cheese World" for a long time, and she is used to everything here, although she keeps reminding herself: she will always leave, and her goal is the mathematics department of Sanwei University in the future.
But these self-reminders cannot appear all the time...
In a sense, she is still like a frog in warm water. She looks sober and has something to do every day, but her life is still muddled.
So what happened in Milkmao Internet Cafe now is like a cruel heavy hammer, or a clear dividing line drawn on the ground, telling her the clear difference between here and there.
She doesn't belong here.
If you just think about it, everything in the heavy cheese world seems meaningless.
But Lin Zhaoxi has a firm belief that the people here are real, the stories here are real, and so is Lao Lin here. Then, no matter how difficult it is, it will never be useless to prevent the misfortune that Lao Lin will encounter in the future.
The hour hand reaches 1.
She picked up the pen and wrote three lines on the white paper in front of her—
1. Assume that Lao Lin's car accident will definitely happen.
2. Assume that the time and location of the car accident remain unchanged.
3. How can Lao Lin be saved
Looking at these three lines, she wrote a lot of solutions below, and listed the possible problems one by one, and then deleted the unrealistic ones, leaving only three in the end.
(1) On the day of the car accident, he pestered Lao Lin and refused to let him go out. Problem: She may not be able to keep Lao Lin.
(2) On the day of the car accident, he followed Lao Lin all the way. Problem: They get knocked away together under uncertain circumstances.
(3) Determine the time and place of the accident, and help Lao Lin avoid the moment of the car accident. Question: Don't know.
The white paper was already covered with dense handwriting, but Lin Zhaoxi only stared at her and wrote the three most difficult words - "I don't know".
Of all the solutions, item 3 looked the best, but was also the most problematic.
Because Chen Zhu's father didn't solve this problem back then, and now her timeline jumps to before that, she won't know more.
She circled the "I don't know" with a pen again, took a deep breath, took the schoolbag, unzipped it, took out the draft paper hidden in the interlayer, and spread it out on the table.
These draft papers have been stuffed in the schoolbag for too long, and they are crumpled, but they are densely packed with her memories of the past written with pens of various colors.
As small as the small shop they often go to eat, as large as the only way for Lao Lin to go to and from get off work every day, there are parks they often go to, and there are friends Lao Lin occasionally visits...
According to experience, she first circled the important places with high frequency of visits, then she rummaged through the drawer and found a map of Anning City.
Looking at the red dots on the map, she realized again what the problem was.
Once, Lao Lin worked in an accounting firm, but now he has changed to the Red Star Welfare Institute, so his course of action should also change accordingly.
So will the location of Lao Lin's car accident really be the same as before
Perhaps because she was too sleepy, she was dazed for a moment.
Inexplicably, many terms appeared in my mind, such as chaos theory, nonlinear mathematics, probability theory and mathematical statistics...
She was confused and fell asleep on the table.
During this night, she always felt that she should have some dreams to obtain corresponding enlightenment.
However, she raised her head from the desk, blinded by the dazzling sunlight outside the window, squeezed her face with her hands, and found that she was very awake, and fell asleep until dawn.
On the desk was still the battle she laid out yesterday, she didn't know what she was going crazy yesterday, what was she thinking at the last moment
— Calculate Lao Lin's future
Complicated nouns appeared again, and Lin Zhaoxi once again fought for his own ideas, and at this moment, there was a knock on the door of the room.
"Breakfast!" Lao Lin shouted outside the house.
She quickly packed up everything on the table and ran out to open the door.
When she didn't expect, she obviously cleaned up for a while, but when the door opened, Lao Lin stood straight at the door without moving his footsteps.
"Didn't change clothes all night?" Lao Lin said sharply.
"I don't think it's dirty!" Lin Zhaoxi casually found an excuse.
Lao Lin showed a disgusted expression, and turned to go to the kitchen.
Looking at Lao Lin's back in the morning light, Lin Zhaoxi blurted out: "Father!"
Lao Lin turned around.
Last night, the tragedy of the milk cat Internet cafe reappeared, and the words that came to her mouth were swallowed abruptly. Lin Zhaoxi forced herself to laugh, and shouted to Lao Lin: "Happy New Year!"
"Let's have fun." Lao Lin said.
—
After breakfast, Lin Zhaoxi packed up her things and went straight to Anning Library.
Standing in front of the bookshelf of mathematics called O1, facing a sea of mathematics books, Lin Zhaoxi once again fell into a kind of contemplation of not knowing what she was doing.
From "mathematical theory" to "classical mathematics", from "combinatorial theory" to "operations research", she neither knew what kind of content she was looking for, nor did she know whether the direction of the solution she was trying to find was correct.
She even wondered a little unrealistically, if she was still in Strawberry World and knew Pei Zhi, the 22-year-old who led the team to participate in the modeling competition, would there be an answer to the calculation problem that plagues her now
Then, her eyes moved to the window of the reading room.
15-year-old Pei Zhi, sitting in the sunshine of the New Year, raised his hand slightly to greet her.
"Aren't you going to play at home during the New Year?" Lin Zhaoxi sat down opposite him, and asked in a low voice, afraid of disturbing others.
"Aren't you at home?"
"I'm afraid of Lao Lin's nagging." Seeing that Pei Zhi was about to speak, Lin Zhaoxi interrupted him, "You can't say that I am too."
"I'm not, there's no one in my family." Pei Zhi said.
"Didn't you spend New Year's Eve together?"
Pei Zhi shook his head.
"Then why don't you come to see us?"
"Probably the same reason you went out."
Lin Zhaoxi froze for a moment, then realized that he was joking, and relaxed a little.
In front of Pei Zhi was a large stack of draft paper, as well as the reference books he was reading.
He seemed to be teaching himself something under the category of mathematical analysis, and the book turned to the content of Hilbert space.
Lin Zhaoxi thought about the question carefully, and then found a suitable entry point: "Have you read "Minority Report"?"
"what is that?"
"A movie."
"What is it about?"
"From the perspective of metaphysics, it is about predicting future crimes."
"Then what?"
"Er... it's a long story..."
When Lin Zhaoxi spoke up to this point, Pei Zhi began to pack his things.
He stuffed the things spread out on the table back into his schoolbag, zipped up the schoolbag, and went out to borrow the reference book at the service desk. Lin Zhaoxi followed him and walked to the small coffee shop in the library.
Pei Zhi ordered a cup of milk tea, put it in front of her, and finally said: "Now we can talk."